Living with the enemy

I'm beginning to think that work stress is nothing to do with the actual work, and instead the result of spending eight or more hours a day in the company of people you can't stand. That's more time than I ever spent on average per day with my wife or partners, or even my daughter.

I keep my head down in the trenches these days, instead of succumbing to my instinct to go over the top with guns blazing. The last great battle resulted in a page editor fleeing the office in tears, a savage stand-up row with the chief sub, disciplinary charges, legal appeals and permanent no-speaks with the deputy editor.

There are several really annoying people in my office. The aforementioned chief sub is gratingly shrill under pressure, admits she has no life outside the office and really seems not to relate to other people or have any idea that they might have feelings of their own. Feelings are not her bag. My approach now is, to hell with it.

But an inexorable drip-drip of stress remains. Administered by a woman with whom I used to have regular bouts of snarling hand-to-hand fighting. Having inflicted a provocation or started an argument, her tactic was to keep up a rapid-fire defence of her position. Any attempt to respond was met with a loud "Let me finish!" So one could either insist on interrupting the flow or just take the medicine.

This year, a strange transformation took place. She started breezing in to work, greeting each colleague by name, inquiring as to their welfare, personal lives and tribulations (as a compulsive nosy parker with a line to the management). But it was obvious to me and everyone else that the insistent bonhomie was entirely insincere. Who whistles while they work, for God's sake? I find myself gritting my teeth as she inquires about my weekend or my health -- and the reason is that I know she doesn't care and dislikes me intensely. At first I assumed she was on some powerful mood drug or anti-depressant. But her approach reminded me of something: the techniques described in How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, the bible of Rotarians everywhere. Anyone who has read that know that it is a paean to insincerity, indeed falsity, from start to finish.

I think it's time I read Sun Tzu's Art of War.

PS: in case anyone thinks I have a problem working with women, it's simply a numerical disparity. My fellow senior colleagues are almost all women. And I enjoy professional relationships based on mutual respect with most of the others.